Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Department of health psychology , Kish International Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kish Island, Iran

2 Professor, Department of Psychology, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran.

3 Department of psychology, Ahvaz branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahvaz, Iran.

4 Department of Psychology, Islamic Azad University, Kish International Branch, Iran.

5 Diabetes Research Center, Health Research Institute, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences.

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to compare the effectiveness of compassion focused therapy and positivist psychology with well-being approach on alexithymia, adaptive behavior and adherence to treatment of patients with type 2 diabetes. The research design was a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest with control group. The sample size included 45 patients with type 2 diabetes who were selected by purposive sampling. Of these, 15 were assigned to the experimental group of compassion focused therapy, 15 to the experimental group of positivist psychology with well-being approach and 15 to the control group by simple random sampling. To collect research data, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (Bagby et al., 1994), the Psycho-social Adjustment with Illness Scale (Derogatis, 1990) and the Adherence Questionnaire (Modanloo, 2013) were used. The compassion focused experimental group received 8 sessions of two-hour intervention and the experimental group of positive psychology with well-being approach received 8 two-hour sessions, too. Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) was used to analyze the data. The results showed that both therapeutic approaches in the post-test phase had a significant effect on alexithymia, adaptive behavior and adherence to treatment of patients with type 2 diabetes (p<0.05). There was no significant difference between the two intervention methods in each of the dependent variables. Based on the findings, it can be said that the application of both therapeutic approaches is effective in reducing alexithymia and increasing the level of adaptive behavior as well as adherence to treatment.

Keywords

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